Most modern keyloggers are considered to be legitimate software or hardware and are sold on the open market. Legitimate software is often used deliberately to steal confidential user information such as passwords. However, the ethical boundary between justified monitoring and espionage is a fine line. There is a lot of legitimate software which is designed to allow administrators to track what employees do throughout the day, or to allow users to track the activity of third parties on their computers. Legitimate programs may have a keylogging function which can be used to call certain program functions using “hotkeys,” or to toggle between keyboard layouts (e.g. Keylogging devices are much rarer than keylogging software, but it is important to keep their existence in mind when thinking about information security. This definition is not altogether correct, since a keylogger doesn’t have to be software – it can also be a device.

Most sources define a keylogger as a software program designed to secretly monitor and log all keystrokes. The term ‘keylogger’ itself is neutral, and the word describes the program’s function. Joe Lopez’s losses were caused by a combination of overall carelessness and an ordinary keylogging program. Lopez had neglected to take basic precautions when managing his bank account on the Internet: a signature for the malicious code that was found on his system had been added to nearly all antivirus product databases back in 2003. However the court did not rule in favor of the plaintiff, saying that Mr. Lopez often used the Internet to manage his Bank of America account. This is how the hackers got hold of Joe Lopez’s user name and password, since Mr. Lopez’s computer was infected with a malicious program, Backdoor.Coreflood, which records every keystroke and sends this information to malicious users via the Internet. The money had been transferred to Latvia.Īn investigation showed that Mr.

In February 2005, Joe Lopez, a businessman from Florida, filed a suit against Bank of America after unknown hackers stole $90,000 from his Bank of America account. Keyloggers: Implementing keyloggers in Windows.

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